At age twenty-three, Goran Bixo emigrated to northern Minnesota, armed with an engineering degree from Katrineholm. His young sister, Ruth, in a memoir, remembers him and their grandfather, "Iorn Anners" (Iron Andersson), for songs and stories at Christmastime. As a child, Goran survived rheumatic fever. He almost died of Spanish flu in 1918. By day in Duluth, he repaired tracks for the streetcar company. By night, he studied English and citizenship at Denfeld High School. He was popular as a vocalist, having been taught by his father, Bengt Bixo, the "Violin King of Morsil." His goal was to be a gud nykommer, an ideal newcomer. In letters home, he recounts immigrant experiences in details that are witty, astute, and optimistic in times of adversity. In Sweden and North America, the documents in this book have circulated in the family for years. After a century, it is time to open them to the world in English translation.

Swedish Christmas is not just a cookbook but an inspiring book full of Christmas memories, recipes and tips of how to make Christmas enchanting. With its atmospheric photographs and engaging stories, it can be used as the ultimate handbook to a magical Christmas or simply be enjoyed as an armchair book. All the recipes have been adapted to the American kitchen.

Learn how Christmas is celebrated around the world by coloring 30 pictures of young carolers in Great Britain, Mexican children playing under a piñata, a Swedish girl wearing a traditional crown of candles, Greek children parading with drums and triangles, an Australian family picnicking on a beach, and more.

Sigrid Rausing describes the changing world of the Estonian Swedes, and the way in which this minority identity was constructed in the various ideologies that have dominated the region since the early twentieth century. In particular she is concerned with the latest of these changes: thepost-Soviet attempt to 'restore' Swedish cultural identity. Rausing touches on a wide range of issues, debates, and insights: the relationship between ideology and form, nationalist and Soviet notions of ethnicity and traditional culture and historically-framed notions of an imagined normality.The ethnographic location for these discussions is a particular former collective farm, now subject to economic decline, the Estonian nation-building ideological project, and new relationships of dependency with Sweden. One of the author's central arguments is that these changes reflect a consciousattempt to 'reform habitus' so as to match that of the local image of the West, but that the location of ethnic culture and many of the operative concepts still reflect the tropes of the Soviet era.

The perfect gift this Christmas season: a generous selection of some of the greatest festive stories of all time This is a collection of the most magical, moving, chilling and surprising Christmas stories from around the world, taking us from frozen Nordic woods to glittering Paris, a New York speakeasy to an English country house, bustling Lagos to midnight mass in Rio, and even outer space. Here are classic tales from writers including Truman Capote, Shirley Jackson, Dylan Thomas, Saki and Chekhov, as well as little-known treasures such as Italo Calvino's wry sideways look at Christmas consumerism, Wolfdietrich Schnurre's story of festive ingenuity in Berlin, Selma Lagerlof's enchanted forest in Sweden, and Irène Nemerovsky's dark family portrait. Featuring santas, ghosts, trolls, unexpected guests, curmudgeons and miracles, here is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short story writers of all time.

In this sweeping epic, true love transcends the brutality of war. Octavio Ribeiro loves truth, beauty, literature, and above all else, his wife Salomé. As a student in Chile, he courted her with the words of great poets, and she fell in love with his fierce intelligence and uncompromising passion. Then a sudden coup brings a brutal military dictatorship into power, and puts anyone who resists in grave danger. Salomé begs Octavio to put his family’s safety first, rather than speak against the new regime. When he refuses, it’s Salomé who pays the price. Belatedly awake to the reality of their danger, Octavio finds political asylum for the family in Sweden. But for Salomé, the path back to love is fraught with painful secrets, and the knowledge that they can never go home again. Previously published as Swedish Tango